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NASCAR: Tony Stewart wins Sprint Cup championship

The early stages of Sunday night's Ford 400 were anything but upbeat for champion-in-waiting Tony Stewart. He began the night chasing Carl Edwards, the only man between him and another NASCAR Sprint Cup Series title. A chunk of debris--maybe from Kurt Busch's blown transmission--knocked a hole in his Chevrolet's grille. The extra pit stops for repairs left him toward the rear of the field, not a good place to be with so much on the line. And his crew didn't exactly shine, either, fumbling through two stops that cost him even more positions.

But through it all Stewart had one thing in his favor: a wickedly fast No. 14 Monte Carlo. The car, in fact, was fast enough--and Stewart drove it masterfully enough--to overcome those early obstacles and win the season-ending race. With the win came his third NASCAR championship.

The race's margin of victory was 1.306 seconds over Edwards. The championship's margin of victory was zero: Stewart and Edwards each scored 2,403 points during the Chase. Stewart won the Cup based on his 5-1 edge in the “most wins” tiebreaker; this was the first time NASCAR has needed the tiebreaker to crown a champion. After being 0-for-26 in the regular season, Stewart won five of the 10 playoff races, including three of the last four.

Edwards began the 267-lap, 400-mile race leading Stewart by three points. Edwards led the most laps early on, then hung close as Stewart got better beyond halfway. As good as Edwards was--and he was very good--nothing he did was enough to earn his first title and team owner Jack Roush's third.

“I gave it my best performance,” said Edwards, whose only win this year came at Las Vegas in the spring. “But I'm still not quite happy with it. That's all I had, though. That's as hard as I could drive. This night is all about Tony Stewart [because] those guys did a great job. We came here to win the pole, lead the most laps, win the race and win the championship. Well, we came up one spot short, but we still had a great night.”

As for the historic nature of the finish: “It's neat to be a part of something like this,” Edwards said, “but it's not neat to lose. I can't think of another thing I could do that would capture my attention and my effort and all my focus like this has. I think in the end it'll make me a better racer and a better person to deal with stuff. I'm not gonna rip the door off the motor home and freak out or anything. I'm disappointed we didn't win, but I'm very proud of the effort.”

Stewart is the only driver to win NASCAR titles under the Winston Cup, Nextel Cup and Sprint Cup banners. He joins Lee Petty, Cale Yarborough, Darrell Waltrip and David Pearson as three-time champions. He's won two titles under the 10-race “Chase” format and one under the old “full-season” format. His latest title bookends his 2005 title, the last one until Sunday night by anyone not named Jimmie Johnson.

Perhaps appropriately, the full glare of the NASCAR spotlight was on the championship contenders the entire weekend. Virtually overlooked were the other top-10 finishers who toiled in relative obscurity: Martin Truex Jr., Matt Kenseth, Jeff Gordon, Clint Bowyer, Kasey Kahne, Kevin Harvick, Denny Hamlin and Jeff Burton. Johnson staggered home 32nd, an inglorious finish to his five-year reign as Sprint Cup champion.

The season-ender was slowed eight times (three of them for rain) for 54 laps. There also was a 74-minute red flag for rain at lap 109. By then, Edwards had led 83 laps and been ahead of Stewart from the green. But the new champion swept by Edwards on the restart after the rain and passed leader Jeff Gordon for a lap-leader bonus point. Moments later, Edwards passed Gordon, too, moving from one point behind into a tie for the lead.

They went back and forth like that the rest of the race. Edwards once led by 21 points. Once, Stewart led by five. Twice, they were tied in points. The championship may well have been decided on the last restart at lap 231, when Stewart went from third to first, passing Kyle Busch and Brad Keselowski. Once in clear air, he steadily drove away from Edwards, leading the final 36 laps even as Edwards got to second at lap 234. They stayed 1-2 to the end, clearly the two best drivers in the two best cars in what some are calling an instant classic.

“It's an awesome night when you have a car this good,” Stewart said. “We said all week if we won the race we wouldn't have to worry about anything else. This was one of the great championship battles. We all dug deep and nobody gave up. It was just an awesome night for all of us. If this doesn't go down as one of the greatest championship battles in history, I don't know what will.”

Fifteen drivers swapped the lead 26 times; most of them changed while pit stops recycled through or during cautions. Edwards led six times for 119 laps, Stewart four times for 65, Kyle Busch once for 16, Kenseth twice for 15, Harvick twice for 12 and Keselowski twice for 11. The other laps went to Gordon (seven), Truex (five), Burton (four), Travis Kvapil and Joe Nemechek (three each), Juan Pablo Montoya, Jimmie Johnson and Greg Biffle (two each) and David Gilliland (one).